Nadal Crosses Off Australian Open as Illness Is Added to Injury

Rafael Nadal, who also has been troubled by a knee injury, has not played since Wimbledon and will drop out of the top four.Credit
Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Rafael Nadal’s comeback has been postponed again after six months away from competitive tennis, and this time he said the crux of the matter was not his troublesome left knee.

Nadal announced Friday that he had withdrawn from the Australian Open, which begins Jan. 14, because of a stomach virus.

The decision means that Nadal, who lost in the 2012 Australian Open final, is guaranteed to drop out of the top four in the men’s tennis rankings for the first time since 2005. Still only 26 years old, he has won 11 Grand Slam singles titles and won a record seventh French Open in June.

“As I have always said, my comeback to the tour will happen when I find myself in conditions that will allow me to compete,” Nadal said in a statement. “After all this time away from the courts I prefer not to accelerate my return, and to do things properly.”

Nadal’s publicist, Benito Pérez-Barbadillo, said in a telephone interview that Nadal began to feel ill Dec. 20 on his home island of Majorca in Spain. By then, Pérez-Barbadillo said, Nadal had been practicing with increased intensity, but his illness forced him to stop training and doctors have advised him to rest for another seven days while undergoing tests.

“Rafa Nadal suffered last week a viral condition that caused a gastroenteritis with a high fever for four to five days,” Ángel Ruíz-Cotorro, the Spanish physician who heads Nadal’s medical team, said in the statement.

Nadal, now ranked fourth, already had withdrawn from this week’s lucrative exhibition in Abu Dhabi. He also pulled out of the tour event next week in Doha, Qatar. He has not played a match since his shocking loss to Lukas Rosol in the second round of Wimbledon on June 28.

After withdrawing from the Summer Olympics in London in July, Nadal, who has struggled occasionally with tendinitis in both knees, later said that doctors had found a small tear in the patellar tendon in his left knee and diagnosed Hoffa’s syndrome, an often painful condition linked to impingement of the fat pad beneath the kneecap.

He elected to forgo surgery, but the rehabilitation process has proved lengthy. Although he continued physical conditioning and other off-court work in the early stages of his break, he did not play tennis again until late November.

“My knee is considerably better and the recovery process has gone as predicted by the doctors, but this virus means that I could not train last week or in the coming days,” Nadal said in his statement.

Some observers, including the leading coach and analyst Brad Gilbert, expressed surprise that Nadal would withdraw from the Australian Open more than two weeks before it began. But Nadal’s uncle and coach, Toni Nadal, said the issue was proper preparation after such a long break.

With Nadal unable to play next week and unwilling to wear himself out by playing a tournament the week before the Australian Open, he would have made his return to competition in a distant, best-of-five-set Grand Slam tournament known for its brutal summer temperatures. Last January, he lost in the final to Novak Djokovic in a match that lasted nearly six hours.

“It is simply not conceivable that his first event is a best-of-five-sets event; he wouldn’t be ready for that,” Toni Nadal said in a statement. “It is true we have been quite unlucky with this, but there is nothing we can do.”

The concern is whether there is more to Nadal’s problems. In an interview with The Times of London last week in Majorca, Nadal acknowledged that the “knee is still not perfect.”

“The doctors say that the images are very good, so that is a big calm for me, but I still feel something,” he said. “I need to be careful. I need to be focused on how the knee is getting better or worse every day and don’t make a mistake that can be negative for my future. Not yet do I have the feeling that I am 100 percent ready to compete, to say, ‘I’m going to go there, I will be ready to run for every ball, to play aggressive, to do what I want with my legs and then try to play my best tennis to win.’ ”

But Pérez-Barbadillo said the virus, not the knee, was the decisive factor in his January withdrawals.

“We’re not lying to people; we never lie to people; it’s not our style,” he said. “His knees are doing well, but he’s got this thing and this thing has stopped him from practice, from getting everything on track.”

Nadal said he expected to play on clay at the Masters 500 event in Acapulco, Mexico, which begins Feb. 25. But he said he could return to the tour earlier.

It is unlikely he will play in Spain’s first-round Davis Cup match, which will be Feb. 1-3 against Canada in Vancouver on a quick indoor hardcourt in a best-of-five-set format. Already committed to Acapulco, Nadal, if healthy, would be more likely to choose one of the February events nearby in South America. Possibilities include Viña del Mar, Chile; São Paulo, Brazil; and Buenos Aires. Those events are all outdoors, best of three sets and on clay, which would allow him to return on his favorite surface and put less strain on his knees than on a hardcourt.

If and when he returns, there will be doubts about his durability and ability to succeed at the highest level in an age when the game is particularly rich in talent at the top with Djokovic, Andy Murray and Roger Federer, who at age 31 is preparing to play in his 53rd straight Grand Slam tournament. The men’s game also has strength in the second tier with Juan Martin del Potro, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, David Ferrer and Tomas Berdych.

“Let’s just say this, it’s giving more hope to other guys,” Gilbert said. “One thing about sports and tennis is that it’s like a treadmill. It just keeps going, and the longer you miss, the tougher it gets.”

That is particularly true of the men’s game. Leading women, including Monica Seles, Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters, have returned from extended breaks to win more major singles titles. But the leading men have struggled to replicate their success after a break of more than six months, and Nadal, if he returns in Acapulco, will have been out of action for eight.

Thomas Muster, who tore knee ligaments after being struck by a car in 1989, was able to return to the circuit six months later and eventually reached No. 1 in the rankings and won the 1995 French Open.

But John McEnroe, who took a six-month sabbatical in 1986 at age 27, never won another Grand Slam singles title. Mats Wilander, who was No. 1 in 1988, took the first of a series of extended breaks in 1990 and never won another major singles title.

But Nadal, unlike McEnroe and Wilander, does not appear to be struggling with motivation at midcareer.

“The guy wants to play, the guy wants to be back,” Pérez-Barbadillo said. “This is another setback, and let’s be glad that this year is over and this is our own Annus horribilis, I suppose. And hopefully 2013 will be better.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 29, 2012, on page D6 of the New York edition with the headline: Nadal Crosses Off Australian Open as Illness Is Added to Injury. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe